Usually early French
immersion students in grade 6 or 7 go on a one week educational trip to
Quebec with their teachers. Parents help students fund raise for this
trip. For example, in the spring of 2000 Quilchena and Trafalgar
schools each made a trip to Montreal, Quebec City and L'Auberge du Mont. In
2002 Quilchena made a trip to Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, and did
not go to L'Auberge du Mont. In 2004 Quilchena made a trip to Montreal,
Quebec City and L'Auberge du Mont, and did not go to Ottawa.

Some Vancouver early
French
immersion schools have done exchange trips to Quebec in grade 6 or 7
where
the students are billeted with families. For example, Jules Quesnel,
Tennyson
and École bilingue schools have done such trips. The Canadian
government's
Department of Heritage in 2000 approved substantial budget increases
for
the Youth Exchange Program, to encourage young Canadians to take part
in
exchange trips and experience different parts of Canada. Groups of
young
people aged 11-18 years are eligible to participate in this program.
All
group travel costs anywhere in Canada are covered and there are no
participation
fees, just a minimal group registration fee. SEVEC Canada, a long time CPF partner,
has
been chosen as one of the organizations to deliver this program. Jules
Quesnel
School reports one year they were not able to get this funding because
their
partner school would not do the return exchange trip.

Quilchena students have
not done an exchange, Instead Quilchena students have traveled as a
group
and met students in Quebec with whom they had been exchanging e-mail
during
the school year.

One year an early French
immersion school obtained a corporate donation towards their trip to
Quebec
in exchange for agreement of some families to volunteer at a community
event the company was a sponsor of.

Some Vancouver early
French
immersion schools have organized a formal sort of trust agreement among
parents
where they begin in grade 4 to make regular contributions for their
child
to take part in a class trip to Quebec in grade 6 or 7. If your school
is
interested, check with the CPF Representative at i.e. Douglas or
Tennyson
school.

Sometimes late French
immersion students in grade 7 or 9 make an educational trip to Quebec
with
their teachers.

Sometimes French immersion
high school grade 10 students can elect to do a 3 month exchange, with
a student in Quebec, where they attend each other's school together.

Sometimes French immersion
high school grade 10 students elect to organize on their own a one to
three
month
exchange, with a student in France, through an organization like OSEF
(see Educational Exchange/Trip Links below), where they attend each
other's
school
together.

Usually French immersion
high school students in grade 10 ( and sometimes 9) have the option of
doing a two week (including the
one week of spring break) educational trip to France with their
teachers. Sometimes the trip is an exchange or includes a short
homestay..

The Quebec and France
trips
enrich the students' learning of French language and culture.

Some French immersion schools
organize a phoning tree of parents for the Quebec or France trips. The
purpose is to minimize volunteer phoning time. For example,
a teacher on the trip calls one of two available parents with news (ie.
change in travel plans from train to bus due a train strike) and that
parent calls the other available parent plus another parent and each
of those parents call two parents and so forth. Another option may be
to
create a list of e-mail addresses.

The teacher volunteer
effort to make these trips possible is much appreciated.Note, Vancouver
parents are advised not to take their France or Quebec exchange student
to ie. Seattle, due to problems taking a child across the border
without the child's parent and due to problems with the exchange
student'
s health travel insurance for Canada in the US.

Encounters
with Canada runs a
one-week, bilingual, Canadian studies program at The Terry Fox Canadian
Youth Centre, in Ottawa.
From September through May, more than 130, 14 – 17 year olds attend the
youth forum each week. Encounters aims to bring young Canadians of
different backgrounds and regions together for an opportunity to learn
about one another, to discover their country through one another, and
to gain a better understanding of Canadian institutions.

While
Encounters with Canada
covers the travel and accommodation costs, students are required to
raise the $625 registration fee. In 2009-10 CPF will award twenty $100
bursaries to youth delegatesfrom BC and Yukon to help subsidize the
registration fee. Only children of CPF members are eligible
for the bursary. Bursaries will be allocated to members on a first
come, first served basis. To apply for the bursary, please download the
form in the form section of our website.

Re educational trips to Quebec or
other francophone environments,
From "The
State of French-Second-Language Education in Canada
2004", chapter
7,
page 52 (in regards to core French, but also of interest for
French
immersion)

"Other areas that that have been found to contribute to improved
language proficiency are a positive parental attitude toward the
learning
of French (Stern et al., 1976), and exposure to French outside the
classroom
(Adiv and Doré, 1982). Students tend to have a more positive
view
of learning French when these conditions are present. One way of
increasing
students’ exposure to French outside the classroom is by visiting
francophone
students in Quebec or other francophone environments (Hanna et al.,
1980;
Lapkin, Hart and Swain, 1995; Deane, 2001). If visits are not feasible,
research has shown that supplementary linguistic and cultural
programmes
at school improve French proficiency and help develop positive
relationships
“between students’ attitudes toward French and French Canadians and
participation in cultural and linguistic exchanges” (Foley et al.,
1988:597). More recently, MacFarlane (2001:78) found that “to acquire a
full repertoire of language skills, and particularly, to be able to
communicate successfully with native speakers in natural contexts,
classroom second language acquisition – even with the additional
context provided by content-based learning – needs to be supplemented
by face-to-face communication with native speakers.” Another effective
way of improving French skills and attitude to learning French is
through Internet exchanges with students in target language
environments (Lawrence,
2002)."

For photo
identification for students travelling within Canada, BC youth can get
a BC Identification card that works as photo ID. The process to get a
BC Identification card takes
4 to 6 weeks.

On arrival in
Quebec or France, recommend purchasing a phone card, especially if on a
homestay/exchange trip as students are not to
make calls from the homestay/exchange family's phone that will be
charged to the homestay/exchange family. May also want to
provide student with instructions re long distance calling with a
home calling card number or credit card. Some phone companies offer a
home calling card for students that only permits long distance calls to
the home number.

Suggest might want to
keep
phone calls at the start of the trip to a minimum in case
a call triggers homesickness. A call during the student's morning
sometimes works better than a call during the student's evening, as the
activities of the day are a good distraction from homesickness.Many of the
French homestay/exchange families have Internet at home, so students
can e-mail from there. On an exchange, for those who do not, students
can usually use the Internet at the French secondary school for e-mail.